Starting Over

I’ve always struggled to maintain a blog. What do I say? Why would anyone care? It’s oscillated between daily happenings, updates on projects, thoughts on books, but nothing has ever really stuck.

One issue is that I worried if I was writing a blog post, it’s not “productive” writing. It’s not creating something larger. I’ve finally come to realize how false that is. All writing is building my craft, honing my skills. Not every word will be gold, but it is all in the service of getting better. Seeing what works. What doesn’t work.

Because of that, I’ve worried that the posts will be a poor reflection on me and my writing because they’ve always been short and unpolished. Why would someone want to read from a writer who can’t even write a short blog post that keeps their interest? Those thoughts have plagued me causing me to fizzle out before I could ever get very far.

I won’t say that “today is a brand new start! I’m going to blog all the time now!” because history shows that’s very much not true.

However, much like writing books, I’m finally overcoming the fear. The fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of not being good enough or smart enough or brave enough to do things I want to do. I don’t want to look back on life and regret that I never took a chance.

I have started taking those chances though. I’ve written two books. More impressively, I’ve shared those books with people. They aren’t perfect, but even that act in of itself shows how far I’ve come. Plus, I’ve queried those books (technically three if we count the children’s book I wrote, which I don’t typically count). With those queries has come hundreds of rejections. They’re painful, but I don’t cry as much any more and just see them as another step toward accomplishing my goal of getting a literary agent. One day.

This dream has been a long time coming. My dream was always to be the next big fantasy author and an editor at a publishing house. It’s what I went to college for. Major in English, work at a publishing house, write the next blockbuster hit.

But I took a creative writing class in college that killed those dreams for far longer than I wish it had. I still remember our final project in that class. We had to share it with our classmates and then give feedback to everyone. One person wrote “I don’t get it.” That was it. That was their whole feedback. At the time, I laughed it off and said “well, I didn’t try that hard any way” (I really didn’t. It was a bad semester for me personally, and I cared way more about the social aspects of college than the professional. Sorry, parents!). Even though that’s true, those words have still stuck with me nearly fifteen years later, so they definitely left their mark.

There was a part of me back then in the folly of my youth that didn’t believe in building your craft. You were either good at writing or you weren’t. The feedback from that class taught me that I wasn’t good enough at writing to really pursue it as a career. And some published authors would still agree with that. There’s a contingent that believes you either have the gift or you don’t and no matter how much you practice, you’ll never be good enough. I don’t agree with that mindset.

I was always told I had the gift. My principal in fifth grade called me out of class to tell me how impressed he was by my essay on Harriet Tubman. He told me I had a gift for writing and to keep at it. I think I rode the coattails of that compliment for far too long. I was naturally talented, so why bother working hard at something I didn’t need to? Again, folly (or really arrogance) of my youth.

Again, I regret how long it took me to learn from those mistakes. I wish I hadn’t given up on my writing and reading for so long. My college experience really stole the joy of both of my once-favorite activities. It took years after my master’s degree to start reading for fun again. Years still to start writing again.

All this to say, there have been setbacks and doubts, but I can’t imagine not writing any more after rediscovering my love for it. What killed it before was my own self-consciousness, my own fear, my own want to be the next big thing.

The fear still remains (who wants to made fun for their words? Their soul?), but the driving force now is the words themself. I just want to write and share my stories. At the end of the day, it’s the storytelling that matters for me now. The creating.

If you’ve stuck around this long for my stream-of-consciousness rant, thank you. I’m always excited to talk with fellow writers and readers and appreciate you all more than you know.

Cheers,

Lindsey